Conversational Norms for Human-Robot Dialogues

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel approach to modeling conversational norms in human-robot dialogue systems using co-operating distributed grammar systems, aiming to detect and handle breaches of norms for improved interaction.

Contribution

It introduces a new modeling framework for conversational norms in dialogue systems and methods to detect and manage norm breaches in human-robot interactions.

Findings

Development of a CDGS-based model for dialogue norms

Methods for breach detection in conversational norms

Framework for handling norm breaches in dialogue systems

Abstract

This paper describes a recently initiated research project aiming at supporting development of computerised dialogue systems that handle breaches of conversational norms such as the Gricean maxims, which describe how dialogue participants ideally form their utterances in order to be informative, relevant, brief, etc. Our approach is to model dialogue and norms with co-operating distributed grammar systems (CDGSs), and to develop methods to detect breaches and to handle them in dialogue systems for verbal human-robot interaction.